Deep in Beverly Hills, an Oscar nominee is considering a pink cocktail dress.

"I like this one, don't you?" She pulls the frock from the rack, briefly sizing it against her slender frame. And just when it's a story about any size-two actress with long shining locks, a breakout movie and a heap of accolades, you remember you're in Forever 21.

This particular actress is 14. And the dress Hailee Steinfeld is coveting? It's $US29.

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The teenager ploughs through racks full of fashion-friendly duds, giggling with her mum, Cheri, over a shirt that reads "Love don't pay the bills". She politely turns down an offer for personal shopping assistance.

But there are signs that life is no longer normal for the girl now best known as the fiery, gun-toting teen Mattie Ross in True Grit.

The coin purse thumping on Hailee's skinny-jeaned thigh is Marc Jacobs. ("He's my favourite," she says.) Her long hair falls in expert waves. And teen singer Justin Bieber personally invited her to his upcoming movie premiere.

It all accounts for the wide grin stretched across her face much of this Friday afternoon.

"It's a lot to comprehend but it's so incredible," says Hailee, finished with shopping now and settled into a vinyl booth at Johnny Rockets. After checking with mum, she orders a cheeseburger ("plain, just meat, cheese and bun"), fries and a vanilla shake.

"I guess I never thought it would happen so fast."

In the remake of True Grit, the Coen brothers throw a Wild West-sized spotlight on Hailee, who's in "most of the film, more than anyone", Joel Coen says. Mattie Ross is ferociously determined to avenge her father's death, and dressed in his oversized hat and belted overcoat she stalks, sasses and insults co-stars Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon into assisting her on her mission.

No matter that this is Hailee's first movie. Or that the unknown beat out roughly 15,000 girls for the role of a lifetime.

"To tell you the truth, I was very concerned about who was going to play that part, because it's a very difficult role," Bridges says. "The thing that was most impressive about Hailee is that she was able to get her tongue around those words and make it feel natural."

His reservations lingered until their first scene together, in which Mattie shakes his whisky-soaked US Marshal Rooster Cogburn awake.

"All I've heard out of you so far is talk!" Hailee barks at Bridges, determined to hire him to track and kill her father's murderer (Josh Brolin). "I know you can drink whisky and snore and spit and wallow in filth and bemoan your station. The rest has been braggadocio!"

"I was talking to Jeff Bridges like that," Hailee says. "Of course, we were doing a scene, but it's so funny, because at the end of the scene I'd think to myself 'OK, why am I talking to Jeff Bridges like this? This is not right.'"

It won Bridges over. "After that day I was so relieved and happy that she was the star of our film," he says.

And if she were to spout out Mattie's vinegar tone to her mother, sitting a few feet away? "If I talked to my mum like that I'd be grounded."

A year ago, Hailee (who had appeared in three commercials and various graduate thesis films at local universities) answered a casting call for True Grit, scored an audition with a casting director and then heard nothing for a month. Then she got a phone call and found herself auditioning with Bridges and Barry Pepper in front of the Coen brothers.

"She just was completely unfazed by that," Ethan Coen says.

Not so, but "I was more excited to be able to show them how prepared I was", she says.

She had it "from the get-go", Coen says, but the brothers cautioned her before offering her the role.

"You're going to get beat up a bit on this movie. We're going to throw you down on the ground, you get stepped on, you have to swim rivers, you have to climb trees."

No problem, retorted the girl who had just turned 13. Two weeks later Hailee was in Santa Fe, New Mexico, taking a cue from Bridges on how her character should roll a cigarette, diving into rivers on horseback and squeezing in three to five hours of school on-set with a tutor.

Months of guns, saddles and spurs won the teen the kind of famous friends who call on Oscar-nomination morning. "I got an email right away from Josh [Brolin], who I've been keeping in touch with a lot," says Hailee. "Jeff [Bridges] called me. I got an email from Matt [Damon]. I got an email from [cinematographer] Roger Deakins. Joel [Coen] called me."

That's not all. In the span of awards season she has met the actors from The Social Network as well as the cast of Glee.

"I love the fact that I meet really cool people every day, and I get to experience something new every day, and I create some of the greatest memories," she says. "And that's really all it is to me. It's just having fun with it all."

Strip away those red carpets and Hailee is a normal teenager with Smurf-blue painted nails, sneaking a few texts over lunch on the BlackBerry she's hoping to turn in to an iPhone.

"I've been saving up," she says.

Hailee's parents - Cheri, an interior designer, and Peter, a personal fitness trainer - are still calling the shots.

"We don't take things too seriously," says Cheri, who sticks by her daughter's side while her dad and brother Griffin, 17, hang out at home in Thousand Oaks, California.

Hailee, who is home-schooled, likes maths, vocabulary and US history, "when I'm in the mood", she says.

She's studied acting since she was eight, starting off at Cynthia Bain's Young Actor Studio and then moving on to private coaches. She says she's missed the social aspect most after leaving public school more than two years ago.

"One of the reasons I left was because of social issues, I guess you could say." Hailee's infectious grin falters slightly. "It wasn't actually about the acting. I don't know, it just kind of - you know, whatever," she pauses.

Bullying?

"Yeah."

In sixth grade?

"Yeah," she says quietly. It's clearly not something she wants to dwell on.

Today, Hollywood heavyweights are in her corner.

"They look out for me," she says of Damon, Bridges and Brolin a few minutes later. "They're all like fathers to me, really. Their families are amazing."

Hailee arrived on the Santa Fe set of True Grit in time to meet her co-stars and watch Bridges fly off to last year's Oscars to scoop a gold statue for best actor in Crazy Heart.

This year, they're both attending as Oscar nominees.

"It's a real fun feeling to go through it with her," says Bridges. "It's kind of the best part of these events, sharing it with people you love and people you've worked with."

It will be a far cry from last year for Hailee, who watched the telecast with her parents. "I mostly watched it for the red carpet to see what everyone was wearing," she says, giggling.

These days Hailee has traded grit for glam, taking spins down the red carpet in Prada, Stella McCartney, Marchesa, Miu Miu and Calvin Klein, each dress carefully hemmed and accessorised to be 14-year-old friendly.

"It's kinda funny, because when I first wanted to get into acting it was partly because of the fact that I thought it was so glamorous, the whole Hollywood world," says Hailee. "And then my first big job, I'm sitting in the make-up chair and they're putting fake dirt on my face.

"Then I go from being told 'Don't worry, the glamorous part's coming,'" she pauses, sipping her milkshake, contemplating what her life is like now. "There's so much to it! I definitely have a different appreciation for what everybody goes through."